A Person in the Space of Conversation and Silence

Abstract

Two books by Andrei Dmitrievich Korol, the rector of the Belarusian State Univer­sity, present a dialogical approach to education, which is deeply and interestingly discussed. Moreover, both studies, though in different formats: one as hermeneut­ics of education, and the other as subject-oriented essays, are mutually addressed to each other and create a trusting conversation, assuming the possibility for the reader to engage in it and continue the thought in a creative mood, to which the author calls. According to the author’s conviction, heuristic learning technolo­gies are based precisely on dialogue – both one’s own and others’ in history, so­ciology, and education, i.e., they presuppose relations of interested audibility, thanks to which historical continuity arises in the spaces of socialization and education. This is the theme of the relationship between benevolent influence and formalizing manipulations. It is about “cultivating” a person in their ability to hear and under­stand others and themselves in the unifying space of dialogue, which they volun­tarily enter, and where “we-experience” (M.M. Bakhtin) is more important than the position of any participant in communication. A.D. Korol introduces the theme of joint presence in education – joint search right from the start. This is a generic, if you like, primary life experience, acquired in the process of education. This is what the teacher needs to uncover in the student. And then, knowledge, possessing necessarily common formal characteristics, acquires, like a person, it’s own “unique pattern of the soul”. Thus, the existentials of education are formed.